St. Marks Evangelical Lutheran Church
Beloved Friends,
In this month in which we celebrate Thanksgiving, I offer this to you for your reflection and for use around your thanksgiving table. It is called a Litany of Thanksgiving, and it is from Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman, pages 147-149.
Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.
I begin with the simple things of my days:
Fresh air to breathe,
Cool water to drink,
The taste of food,
The protection of houses and clothes,
The comforts of home.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!
I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:
My mother’s arms,
The strength of my father,
The playmates of my childhood,
The wonderful stories brought to me from the lives of many who talked of days gone by
when fairies and giants and all kinds of magic held sway;
The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;
The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the eye with its reminder that life is good.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I finger one by one the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:
The smile of approval from those who held in their hands the reins of my security;
The tightening of the grip in a single handshake when I feared the step before me in the darkness;
The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest and the claims of appetite were not to
be denied;
The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open page when my decision hung in the
balance.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I pass before me the mainsprings of my heritage:
The fruits of the labors of countless generations who lived before me, without whom my own life
would have no meaning;
The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;
The prophets who sensed a truth greater than the mind could grasp and whose words could only
find fulfillment in the years which they would never see;
The workers whose sweat has watered the trees, the leaves of which are for the healing of the
nations;
The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons, whose courage made paths into new
worlds and far-off places;
The saviors whose blood was shed with a recklessness that only a dream could inspire and God
could command.
For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.
I linger over the meaning of my own life and the commitment to which I give the loyalty of my heart
and mind:
The little purposes in which I have shared with my loves, my desires, my gifts;
The restlessness which bottoms all I do with its stark insistence that I have never done my best,
I have never reached for the highest;
The big hope that never quite deserts me, that I and my kind will study war no more, that love and
tenderness and all the inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the life of the children of God as the waters cover the sea.
All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,
I make as my sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,
Our Father, in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.
Peace,
Pastor Doug
PS. I personally give thanks for all your words of appreciation and gratitude that you have given Carol and I this past month in recognition of Pastor’s Appreciation Month. I am deeply grateful for all the kind comments, the thoughtful gifts, and the notes of encouragement. The challenge of being a pastor is that most of the work is long term. Transformation happens slowly, growth takes time, and an increase in faith is difficult to measure. So I appreciate the glimpses that what I do does indeed bring about the kingdom of God within you.
PSS. Following my sermon where I invited us to make sure that we are feeding the hungry who are close (family), near (Wapakoneta), and far (overseas) I was asked how to contribute locally. Mercy Unlimited has a food pantry for the hungry. They report that every month the need is increasing, and if the government shut down lasts past Nov. 1 no one will get SNAP benefits in November. The website where you can donate is https://mercyunlimited.org/
